


The Hindu Times

by neville



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Not a lot of detective work is shown cus nah, Post-Canon, Post-Hogwarts, Post-Loss, Private Investigators, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 11:56:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11207586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neville/pseuds/neville
Summary: Draco hasn’t an inkling of what he’s signed himself up to until the car comes rumbling up to the pavement besides Malfoy Manor; it’s a battered red BMW E30 that looks as if it had seen better days before it had even left the factory, and he swallows his crushed pride as he slams into the passenger seat next to George, sucking a lollipop like there’s something cool about it.





	The Hindu Times

Draco hasn’t an inkling of what he’s signed himself up to until the car comes rumbling up to the pavement besides Malfoy Manor; it’s a battered red BMW E30 that looks as if it had seen better days before it had even left the factory, and he swallows his crushed pride as he slams into the passenger seat next to George, sucking a lollipop like there’s something cool about it, like it’s a cigar and he’s living in the era of The Sopranos – though, Draco thinks with a vague hint of amusement, he hits the same mark of cool as the novel rather than the series.

“Been a while, Malfoy,” George croons as he presses his foot on the gas, the car rolling smoothly out and along the cobbled roads, rumbling unhealthily. “I’m hoping you read up on all the case files?”

“The fuck’s got you working as a PI, Weasley?” Draco asks, folding his arms, the folder of his case files strewn over his lap – of course he’s fucking _read them_ ; what’s George expecting, a level of expertise to match his own thick brother Ron? Draco is better than that – not enough so as to expect a better job than trailing people in ancient boxes that call themselves cars, but he’s better, and that’s clear, to be expected. “I was under the impression you were running a joke shop.”

“You were a fan of our products, or so I’ve heard,” George replies, though he sounds ambivalent about the whole affair, which surprises Draco – he appears to have mellowed out somewhat, despite the clear aesthetic he runs with, old car and lollipop and thick sunglasses like he’s in a B-movie. He feels vaguely like he ought to check that there’s not a gun in the car door. “Lee runs it on the off-season, so I can do this.”

“Let me repeat the question: why the hell are you wasting your time with this, when you have a perfectly successful business enterprise?” Draco says, making sure to speak slowly, stressing word after word in case George doesn’t understand him this time – stupid, really, for a PI. He answers questions like a politician, another Cornelius Fudge.

“Cause it’s fun,” George says with a shrug. Draco doesn’t believe him for a moment, but as he turns off and out of the collection of streets surrounding the Manor, George takes a turn in the conversation, too, and chasing it seems pointless. “So, we’re on the Finch-Fletchley case today – the plan is to speak to him, re-evaluate our position and, if he wants us to go forward, we’ll stakeout at Flourish and Blotts tomorrow and see what we can see. Any objections?”

“Apart from working this job, no,” Draco says, leaning his head back. George snorts, leaning forward and switching the radio on; _The Hindu Times_ rocks the car, and becomes the opening symphony for a new day.

* * *

Stakeouts are fucking _exhausting_ , Draco finds: sitting up until late into the night in the company of a quip-happy jokester in his shitty, claustrophobic car is a surefire way to keep him cranky, despite George’s habit of sneaking in enough food for a family of five each time, and when George had offered the first time to let him just sleep over instead of taking the hours’ drive remaining, it had seemed perhaps the easiest option.

George’s flat is above the shop, and still dressed for two: Draco can’t sleep in Fred’s bed, because that’s too disgusting, even for him, and so he takes the sofa, a comfy green affair with patchwork blankets and a fortress of pillows. He thinks he might crash the minute his head touches the fabric, but instead, he can’t sleep at all: his eyelids are heavy, but his brain stubbornly remains active.

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” George says, stirring sugar into a cup of tea. “Could never sleep after Fred – not for weeks, anyway. I’d be so bloody tired I couldn’t stand up, but I couldn’t sleep if I tried.” He drinks in comedy mugs stained at the lip and his living room is lit with magic and dusty vintage lamps that remind Draco of the way they were always dressed in hand-me-downs; it’s warm, though, with real central heating that feels like an embrace if he weren’t so acutely aware he feels like he’s taking up a role that can never be replaced.

“All this and we still have no fucking clue what Greengrass is up to,” he groans, accepting the tea, still not quite sure he’s capable of thanking a Weasley; George’s hands have the slightest tremor to them, he’s noticed, and part of him wants to clasp them still – the rest of him is perturbed that he could even think such a thought.

“The work can be slow,” George assures him, “but we’ll get there. The payoff makes it worth it.”

“You never told me why you took up this kind of work,” Draco says from across the steam of hot vapour. “It’s been two months. Don’t I at least deserve that? You know why _I’m_ here.”

“Oh, yes, I do. You got so bored you decided that nebbing in on other peoples’ lives would be a good time-killer.” George leans on the back of the sofa; he smells of cinnamon rolls and aftershave and days spent in his BMW thumbing their way through packets of Love Hearts while waiting for inevitably nothing to happen, the radio humming out the songs of the day while George laughs about something or other – his laugh is hearty, infectious. “But fine. I will.” He tosses Draco a Hob Nob; it lands in his tea.

“Like everything in life, it’s Fred.” George shifts, uncomfortable, like a dozen invisible weights are pressing him all over his body with red-hot surfaces. “He always thought it’d be funny to start our own private investigations company and run it like we were in a bad eighties film or something – and, after he died, I felt listless, hopeless, directionless: the triad of misery and depression.” George’s jokes are lifeless, like all the soul they might’ve once had left him with Fred; he stutters over the word ‘died’, as though even admitting it to himself is still too hard. Draco wants to tell him it’s okay; he knows that’s a lie. “So I started doing this. I’m the only wizarding private investigations firm, so I get a lot of business, but do you know what the worst fucking part of this is?” His shaking has amplified, and his teeth clench, hands white where they grip the back of the sofa. “He would’ve hated this. Sitting in cars doing nothing all day following around people who probably aren’t cheating on the behalf of their ridiculously paranoid spouse for no reward, just some money that isn’t worth the hours you killed for it.”

“You said the reward was worth it,” Draco reminds him softly, the teacup suspended in the air as he turns; George is red with tears that steal across his cheeks like they’re running a hundred-meter sprint.

“I just said that because I could tell you were as bored as I was.” George shakes his head, wiping angrily at his eyes with the back of his hand. “What’s in this life, Draco? I’ve lost myself.”

“Flamel be damned, George; _Fred’s_ in this life – don’t you go bloody shouting about what he would’ve thought and not consider that you’re living for him, now. He never got this life that you have, so you better not fucking waste it, and if you really hate this job, give someone else the company and to do something else, because nobody _asked_ you to waste all your time.” Draco’s angry, too; he wants to hold George, to wipe his tears and soothe him and the idea makes him nauseous to the point of backlash. George’s eyes shine with a feeling that’s ineffable, and because he alone knows the humiliating truth that Draco never passed his Apparition test, takes him home Side-Along and vanishes again, leaving what feels like a black hole, a hush in the atmosphere.

George’s void smells of Capri-Sun and Fizzers.

* * *

The BMW is a friend, though a temperamental one: George is ripping her apart in the rear, scratching his head in puzzlement as to why she’s given out on him, and Draco waits in the front with boots rested by the dashboard, his aviators tinting the world green. Six months into being a PI, and he thinks he might’ve grown to adore the job, the thrill of the chase, the excitement of beginning to clinch someone in their own web – George might have been lying once, but if Draco can read him, he’s engrossed in the same rush.

George comes swinging back into the driver’s seat, and the car seems to have recovered from her temper tantrum, running with just the slightest splutter. “So,” he says, squinting at the street signs as he tries to navigate the labyrinth of estate to Bulstrode’s. “You really joined us cause you were bored?”

“Sitting on your riches in bloody boring,” Draco snorts. “I don’t know; I think, maybe I wanted to get away from having to deal with myself as if it were a full-time job.”

“You’re surprisingly pleasant company, you know,” George answers, pulling up in front of a house that seems to radiate deprivation; Bulstrode’s ambition hasn’t taken her anywhere, he supposes.

“You’re not at the forefront of the self-targeted cynicism,” Draco points out; he can rip down walls with his scathing wit, the only problem being that he isn’t immune to it, despite having flirted intimately with it for years.

“And I’ve told you, you can talk to me about it, but you never do. I’ve survived a lifetime of an inferiority complex, you know.”

“Your suggestion of coming to you to feel pathetic as a pair is hardly reassuring.” He approaches the paint-peeling door, waiting for George to flank him; they’re like the world’s shittest comedy double act. _Eric and Ernie should be shaking in their boots_ , Draco thinks nonchalantly, and though he’d like to make this quip to George, he has a feeling that George has just thought the same thing.

* * *

It smells of lollipops and Tetley Extra Strong; Draco’s eyelids flutter, and he allows himself the moment of nuzzling into George’s fuzzy chest. He remembers the night before, remembers the salty taste of George’s bittersweet tears on his tongue because he was so fucking sick of watching George fold into himself like origami. Far more importantly, really, he remembers the feel of George’s arms around him clinging to him as if for dear life and the way they had loosened over the night; if he can make a difference, then by Paracelsus, he’s going to take his chance. Fuck the war, and fuck the misery.

“Draco.” George has such a _ditsy_ little grin and Draco catches it in his own.

Fuck misery; Draco hears a siren call, and it’s the slogan of the twenty-first century: _choose life_.

* * *

The first time he sleeps with George is at Malfoy Manor; they have the time to drive all the way back, and he invites George in just for a cup of tea, coffee, something. He’s always felt a swell of pride surrounding the Manor – it’s aesthetically eloquent, Gothic, a masterpiece; and yet now he feels like he’s presenting George with a shitty bedsit, because Malfoy Manor doesn’t feel like home – not to him, not to anyone.

“Are your parents not here?” George asks, helping the house elves gather the coffee grinds, tea bags, and biscuits as Draco switches on the kettle in a routine like a waltz across the cold floors; George looks so natural, as if he’s lived there for years, and Draco almost catches himself wanting to sink into George’s back like a lover.

“They’re here and there between the country house in France and the Manor,” Draco replies, leaning against the countertop, pristine and without George’s habitual stainage. “I stay here. I decided not to run away from people - it’s like an admission of guilt, to run.”

“What are you even guilty of?” George asks, stirring sugar into a tiny whirlpool; Draco thinks that it possibly represents how he feels best of all. “Being scared? Everyone was scared, but you were scared and an arm’s length away from Voldemort. They can’t fucking blame you.”

Draco snorts; George senses he’s being patronised, save for the fact that he’s become immune – he works retail and has been automatically granted his sainthood. “Oh, believe you me, George, they do.”

“I’ve half a mind to tell them to piss off, then,” George scoffs, but with rage, as if he’s a boiling kettle and it rumbles just beneath the surface; he’s a façade, though if he lets it down, he might break and belong in a scrapyard, or attain the obtainability of helium.

Draco can’t help himself anymore, because he’s been left so long the phrase _to stand up for_ sounds meaningless bouncing in his eardrum; he bunches his fists into the polyester of George’s spotted shirt, and their lips are colliding head-on at eighty miles per hour.

He’s never spoken to anyone after sex before; George plays with his hair, and resumes their conversation sprawled naked on Draco’s bed. He resists the urge to laugh; he resists the urge to tell George his company is ecstatically wonderful; he resists the urge to admit he’s fallen like Lucifer, head over heels.

* * *

“Ready?”

“Just a tic.”

Draco straightens his tie, runs a tongue over his perfect top row of teeth, and slams the front door, relaxing into his passenger seat, head tipped backwards; from between his lips hangs a lollipop stick, his eyes adorned with shades; their speaker blasts eye-rollingly modern rap as they roll along the streets, windows rolled down.

 _Fuck_ , thinks Draco, watching the stunned onlookers whip by in a haze neither he nor them will remember in the hours that follow, clacking the ball of sugar and artificial flavouring between his teeth. He loves this job.

He glances to his left; too, he loves George, who’s like a fucking fallacy – but he laughs like a sunny day and holds Draco like he’s worth all the galleons in the world, and he’s somehow glad that he’s here, in a fucking BMW E30 like the biggest tosspot a B-movie has ever seen.

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed writing this, and I hope you enjoyed reading this! Give me a shout if you did, or come yell at me on Tumblr @chrlieweasleys, especially if you love this ship too!


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